


lately, i like 'em crazy (maybe you could devastate me)

by voxofthevoid



Category: Captain America - All Media Types, Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: (Super)Human Steve Rogers, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Anal Sex, Blood Drinking, Captain America Steve Rogers, Communication, Dominance and Submission, Established Relationship, Fluff and Smut, Human/Vampire Relationship, M/M, Mean Dom Steve, Mild S&M, Oral Sex, Porn with Feelings, Pre-World War II Bucky Barnes, Riding, Vampire Bucky Barnes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-24
Updated: 2019-07-24
Packaged: 2020-07-12 12:16:39
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,884
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19946023
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/voxofthevoid/pseuds/voxofthevoid
Summary: “You wake me up beggin’ for blood, you gotta earn it.”Bucky’s pupils are blown wide when Steve looks back at him, their black luminous and downright eerie surrounded by a ring of red. Steve loves it, hoards these moments where Bucky’s blatant in how non-human he is. Steve’s the only one who gets to see this. Even the other Avengers get grey-blue eyes, blunt teeth, and gloved hands that hide the corpse-chill of Bucky’s skin. But he doesn’t hide from Steve, and the thought echoes in his mind with possessive fervor.“Well?” Steve murmurs, voice hoarse with want and love. “Get to it.”Bucky snatches the lube from under his pillow and climbs on top of Steve, straddling his thighs and looking pretty enough to eat. He glances uncertainly between the lube in his grip and Steve’s cock, a considering furrow between his brows.“Steve,” he says after a minute. “Can I suck your dick?”“So polite now,” Steve teases, grinning when Bucky shoots him an unimpressed look. “Sure, Buck. Put your fangs away first.”-Bucky’s a vampire, and Steve is Steve. The twenty-first century still finds them fucking their brains out and bleeding feelings all over the bed.





	lately, i like 'em crazy (maybe you could devastate me)

**Author's Note:**

> My usual take on vampires tends to be much darker, but you know what, Bucky deserves to be soft and have someone love on him. ~~And I have another, longer vampire AU in the works anyway.~~ Also, I was a wee bit confused tagging this because it’s sure as hell not shrunkyclunks but [rohkeutta](https://archiveofourown.org/users/rohkeutta/pseuds/rohkeutta) called post-serum Steve/pre-war Bucky “Twink Tank” in a fic, and I’d say that fits this pretty well.
> 
> I’ve got a [tumblr here.](https://voxofthevoid.tumblr.com/)

Steve wakes to the familiar sensation of a mouth working at his throat. He doesn’t startle into awareness the way he usually does, all at once and more urgent than panicked. It’s slower, this awakening, his mind surfacing gently to register the tongue and teeth pressing into his skin.

Between blinking his eyes open and arching his neck for Bucky’s mouth, the last of sleep flees.

Steve shoots out a hand and yanks Bucky away by the hair.

“Jesus Christ,” he sighs, exasperated, pinning Bucky with a glare. The sheepish expression that greets him is somewhat offset by the striking red of Bucky’s eyes. “Can’t fuckin’ wait for me to get up?”

“But Steve,” Bucky complains, a distinct whine to his voice. His face does that thing where he’s trying to look sweet and pathetic so Steve will let him have his way. “I’m hungry.”

“You’re desperate is what you are,” Steve snaps, giving Bucky a good shake. It’s got to sting, Bucky’s long hair bunched inelegantly in Steve’s grip and his neck arched at a sharp angle, but Bucky just moans, lips parting to expose his gleaming fangs.

“Steve, Stevie, please, baby, I’m so hungry, just a bite, I’ll be real quick, c’mon, _please_ ,” Bucky begs, shameless and loud, trying his damn best to melt Steve with his pouty lips and doe eyes. It’s fucking surreal, how a red-eyed, fanged vampire can pull off puppy dog eyes better than the most sweet-looking human Steve’s ever met, but damn if it ain’t true. Bucky’s a damned menace, but fact is, he’s Steve’s menace.

Steve lets go of his hair and folds his arms under his head. His neck twinges with the telltale itch of healing bruises. Bucky must have done a number on his neck before Steve woke. He likes everything that Erskine’s serum has done for him, but one thing he does regret is that his skin can’t cling to Bucky’s marks. Nothing to do about it. Bucky’s the same, vampire healing always erasing the unholy havoc Steve wreaks on his beautiful body.

Bucky visibly perks up, eyes narrowing in on the stretch of Steve’s throat.

“Eyes up here,” Steve barks, a little thrill lighting up his spine at the way Bucky jumps and guiltily brings his eyes to Steve’s. “Christ, you’re worse than a pet. Should’ve gotten a cat or a dog. Most I’d have to deal with is waking to a butt on my face or being licked, but I put up with that for you anyway.”

“Steeeve, don’t be mean,” Bucky whines, pouting prettily. He’s looking a little dazed, and there’s enough blood in his veins to lend a faint pink to his cheeks so he’s not as hungry as he claims to be.

Little shit.

“Mean? S’the truth is what it is.”

“No. I’m better than that. I can give you so much more.”

Steve almost smiles, seeing where this is going and fucking loving it.

“Yeah?” he challenges, keeping his tone gruff. “Like what? Enlighten me, Buck.”

The kiss Bucky crashes them into is a little contained disaster, all teeth and messy tongue, but it gets Steve’s blood burning. His hands tighten into fists with the urge to grab Bucky and pull him closer, get inside him, but he keeps them where they are and kisses Bucky back with all he’s got, nipping at his lips and prodding at his fangs until Bucky pulls back with his eyes almost glowing and his bloodlust thick in the air.

“Fuckin’ desperate,” Steve repeats, hungrily eyeing the way Bucky shudders at his words. “Fine. You want it so bad, you can have it, but Bucky Barnes, you better make it worth my time.”

Bucky, who was well on his way to a manic grin, blinks and tilts his head like a confused puppy.

“Steve?”

Steve looks meaningfully down his own body, the sheets kicked off sometime in the night. His dick’s not hard, but it’s not soft anymore either, hasn’t been since he woke up to Bucky’s mouth on his neck.

“You wake me up beggin’ for blood, you gotta earn it.”

Bucky’s pupils are blown wide when Steve looks back at him, their black luminous and downright eerie surrounded by a ring of red. Steve loves it, hoards these moments where Bucky’s blatant in how non-human he is. Steve’s the only one who gets to see this. Even the other Avengers get grey-blue eyes, blunt teeth, and gloved hands that hide the corpse-chill of Bucky’s skin. But he doesn’t hide from Steve, and the thought echoes in his mind with possessive fervor.

“Well?” Steve murmurs, voice hoarse with want and love. “Get to it.”

“Yes,” Bucky breathes, scrambling to move. He snatches the lube from under his pillow and climbs on top of Steve, straddling his thighs with his gaze intent on Steve’s cock. He looks uncertainly at the lube in his grip and then at Steve’s cock, obviously wrestling with some question he’s putting together. Steve gives him time to think, admiring the view as he does. Bucky’s so damn pretty, it drives Steve crazy sometimes.

“Steve?” Bucky says after a minute. “Can I suck your dick?”

“So polite now,” Steve teases, grinning when Bucky shoots him an unimpressed look. “Sure, Buck. Put your fangs away first.”

Bucky’s expression shifts into his patented I’m-Not-An-Actual-Idiot-Steven look. He peels his lips back to bare his teeth, just so Steve can see the fangs retreat and become blunted canines.

“Atta boy,” Steve croons. It’s both praise and condescension, and he can see how it gets to Bucky, making his breath catch and cock twitch.

Bucky, despite asking permission, doesn’t put his pretty mouth on Steve’s dick. He pops the lube open instead, squeezing a generous amount onto his fingers. He puts the tube aside and rearranges himself, on his elbows and knees, face hovering above Steve’s cock and ass up in the air. Steve understands what he’s doing just as Bucky’s lips slide over the head of his dick.

He hisses at the sensation, the chill of Bucky’s mouth always a shock down there. He gets used to it fast and keeps his eyes open to watch, torn between the bulge of his cock against Bucky’s cheek and where his hand is working at his ass. Mortal men are not made for this view, Bucky’s red mouth and closed eyes and the uncontrolled way he jerks back into his own fingers.

And then Bucky’s pulling off, only for a moment before diving back down with a determined expression. He doesn’t need to breathe, and he puts that to good use now, taking Steve deep. He doesn’t stop when it hits the back of his throat, only angles his head to swallow it _deeper_ until his noise is buried in the thatch of hair at Steve’s groin.

Steve watches him with wide eyes and an open mouth, sucking in air desperately as Bucky swallows around him, tongue working clumsily on what it can, all of it driving Steve a little crazy. It gets worse when Bucky does something to himself with his hand and _moans_ around Steve, the sound vibrating through his cock and up his spine, thrumming through his whole fucking body.

“Enough,” Steve gasps, half-order, half-plea. He unwinds his arms from behind himself and grabs Bucky, again by the hair, pulling him off his cock. He mourns the loss of that sweet, filthy suction. Bucky just looks at him with a wide, innocent gaze that does nothing to hide the satisfied curl of his mouth.

Steve tightens his grips and yanks Bucky forward, viciously pleased when the motion pulls his fingers out of himself and makes him yelp. Bucky falls on Steve’s chest and just lies there, pouting up at him.

“So mean to me.”

“Yeah, I am, baby,” Steve says, smiling. “You like it.”

Bucky grins unrepentantly.

“Damn right I do.”

Steve taps him gently on the cheek, and Bucky follows the unspoken command and crawls up into a kiss, opening his mouth with a sigh for Steve to lick into.

“Stretched enough?” Steve asks when they part. “You still ain’t earned my blood, Buck.”

Bucky huffs, but he’s still grinning.

“More or less,” he says. “You know I like it to hurt.”

“I like you to hurt too,” Steve says with a sharp grin of his own, gut clenching when Bucky shudders. “Look at that. You’re gagging for it, huh?”

“Always am,” Bucky gasps, scooting down Steve’s body until his ass is pressed to Steve’s cock. “S’your fault. Can’t pack a thing like this and not expect me to want to sit on it all the damn time.”

“Little slut,” Steve says fondly, reaching out to tweak a perked nipple. Bucky hisses, and Steve does it again, harder, twisting the little nub between thumb and finger until Bucky’s eyes are glassy and wet and his mouth is open in a silent cry. “Go on then. Gimme a good show, baby.”

And boy, does he ever.

Bucky takes cock like he’s made for it, every single time, eyes screwed shut and mouth invitingly open as he sinks down on Steve. He doesn’t make a sound until he bottoms out, and when he does, it’s a gutted whimper, the sound so soft like he just can’t help it. Steve gluts himself on the view, and it’s enough of a distraction from the cold clench of Bucky’s body. The chill permeating Bucky’s flesh and the way it tries to seep into Steve’s cock when it’s inside him are things he’s used to but still can’t quite prepare for.

He went soft, the first time, but Bucky persisted beautifully, working his ass around Steve and kissing him filthily until he hardened back up and fucked Bucky through the mattress.

It’s not so complicated, now, and there’s a part of Steve that’s perversely turned on by how different Bucky is, how the way he feels is a drug Steve can’t get anywhere else, not that he’s tempted to try.

“Move,” Steve says when Bucky just sits there with his eyes closed, basking in being full. Every fucking time, and god, the things he does to Steve.

“Yeah, I’m–” is all he says before biting down on his lip and doing as asked, dragging his ass up Steve’s cock. It’s a hell of a view, Bucky with his hands braced on Steve’s thighs, the muscles of his abdomen straining, hard cock bobbing gently between their bodies. Bucky’s a little slip of a thing, all lean limbs and wiry muscles, gorgeous but so small like this, perched on Steve’s serum-induced, gym-conditioned bulk. Steve wants to reach out and tuck Bucky against his chest, fuck up into him until he cries, but he told Bucky to put on a show and earn his bite, so he keeps his hands to himself, biding his time.

Bucky’s quick to work up a rhythm; slow, maddening drags of his body up Steve’s dick and fast, violent drops, punching little sounds out of them both each time. It’s a struggle for Steve to keep his eyes open, the tight grip of Bucky’s body combined with the sight of Steve’s cock disappearing into his ass damn near lethal, but hell if he can look away, bewitched by the pink part of Bucky’s lips as moans spill from them and the gentle flush of his cock where it stands untouched.

“Steve,” Bucky moans, wanton, prying Steve’s eyes away from their joined bodies and to Bucky’s face. His eyes are big and dark, the jut of his mouth pleading.

“You want something, baby?”

“Yes, yeah, c’mon, you know I do, let me, just a bite, I won’t take much, _promise_ ,” Bucky babbles, and Steve’s gotta give it to him – he doesn’t falter once, bouncing up and down on Steve’s cock as he runs his mouth.

“Broken record, aren’t you?” Steve taunts, just to watch him squirm. And squirm he does, shuddering and driving down hard on Steve, fingers clenching and unclenching where they’re dug into Steve’s thighs.

“Please,” Bucky gasps out, pinning Steve with a pair of pathetically hopeful eyes.

“Alright, alright, come up here.” Steve beckons with a hand, and Bucky leans in as much as he can without letting Steve’s dick slip out of him. And then he pauses, pushing his cheek into Steve’s palm like an affectionate kitten. When he tries to move closer, Steve digs his fingers into his jaw. “ _No_. Didn’t say you could get off me, sweetheart.”

“I–” It’s heady, how Bucky looks so genuinely torn, wanting to stay on Steve’s dick but aching to get his teeth in him. “Can you – sit up? Please, Steve?”

“I gotta go all the work here, huh?”

Bucky whines but doesn’t protest. Writhes on Steve’s cock instead, making him gasp and jerk his hips up, burying himself all the way back inside Bucky. Steve lets his head fall back, eyes shut tight to stave off the encroaching edge, and the effect his bared throat is having on Bucky is so clear. Steve can feel the sudden tightness of his body and hear the little keening noise he can’t hold in.

Steve drags in a deep breath and heaves himself upright, hands shooting out to hold Bucky securely against him. He pets him a little, tugging at his hair and stroking down his chest, carefully skirting his eager cock. Then he pulls Bucky even closer so that their torsos are flush together with Bucky’s face tucked into Steve’s neck. Bucky’s mouth opens against the skin instantly, fangs sliding out to press against Steve’s skin. But he doesn’t bite. Waits, like a good boy.

Steve strokes a hand from the base of Bucky’s spine to the nape of his neck, slides his fingers into his messy bedhead, and grips tight like a leash.

“Go on,” he murmurs, tilting his head back. “You can bite.”

Bucky moans and sinks his teeth in.

It’s Steve’s turn to moan, then, the first shock of pained pleasure the most intense. The pain vanishes with the teeth, and then it’s just Bucky’s mouth sucking hard and desperate on the wound, moaning and squirming against Steve like it’s too much and he can’t fucking get enough.

Steve relaxes into it, sighing softly. The intensity ebbs, settling into a dull pleasure that throbs all along his body. It’s different with him. He’s seen the way non-enhanced humans react to Bucky’s bite; the rolling eyes and helpless moans, their bodies trembling out of their control and their minds a fog of induced pleasure. Steve gets this, Bucky’s suckling mouth and a warmth that spreads slow, sweet tendrils through his body.

He sighs softly and gives himself a few moments to just drink in the sensation. Then he tightens his hand in Bucky’s hair and yanks him off.

Bucky yelps, lips bloody and eyes wild as he stares at Steve. He moves, maybe trying to return to Steve’s neck, but the motion makes Steve’s cock nudge up into him, and Bucky moans like he’s shocked at the reminder. Steve just watches him, amused and aching to wreck him a little.

The bite itches as Steve’s skin knits itself back together, and it’s almost funny, the mournful expression on Bucky’s face as he watches it happen.

“Bucky,” Steve calls, chiding, and satisfaction curls dark in his gut when Bucky starts and turns wide eyes on him. There’s a little trickle of blood down his chin now, but his lips are less red, the blood licked off them. “Baby, what did you say?”

Bucky blinks, uncertain, and shifts a little. He moans again when that makes Steve’s cock move in him, and Steve swallows his own groan at the little spark of sensation, focusing on Bucky’s painfully open face.

“You said you’d take just a little,” Steve prompts, barely holding back a grin at the realization dawning on Bucky’s face. “Said it would be quick. And were you gonna? Make it quick and stick to your word?” Bucky open his mouth to answer, but Steve doesn’t let him. “No, you weren’t, were you?”

“I – I didn’t, Steve–”

“You didn’t _what_?”

“I didn’t mean to,” Bucky says quietly, lower lip wobbling. “I’m sorry, Stevie.”

Steve wonders what it says about him that Bucky’s shaking voice and sorrowful eyes have a direct line to his dick, bypassing his mind and his heart in favor of urging him to grab Bucky by the hips and fuck into his sweet, trembling body.

Bucky shouts, digging fingers into Steve’s arms and trying to hold on as Steve fucks up viciously, one thrust turning into three into seven, until he loses count and has to sink his teeth into Bucky’s shoulder to try and bring himself under control. Bucky’s a noisy wreck by the time he stops, and he whimpers when Steve pushes in deep and stays there, keeping Bucky flush to his body the way he’s always aching to do.

“Ain’t got any control, do you, Buck?” Steve says, mouthing his way up Bucky’s throat and murmuring into his ear. “Would take and take and take unless someone put a goddamn leash on you. Ain’t that right?”

It’s objectively not right. He’s got the most control of any vampire Steve’s met.

Granted, Steve hasn’t met many of them, and the last couple were actively trying to kill Bucky so those encounters were remarkably short. But it’s still true.

That doesn’t change how Bucky keens at Steve’s words and shudders against him, how has to try a good minute before he can voice anything beyond pitiful little gasps.

“You’re – you’re right,” he says in the end, sounding so small. Steve grinds up into him, just a little, but Bucky cries out like he’s getting railed through a wall. “Steve, _Steve_.”

“Ssh.” Steve nuzzles into Bucky’s cheek, trails his lips over chilled skin until he reaches Bucky’s mouth. He tastes like blood, mouth warm from drinking Steve in. He licks in, takes back the warmth, until Bucky’s mouth is cold and tasting of flesh, of himself. His eyes are red-veined blue when Steve pulls back. “Oh, look at that.”

“Steve,” Bucky begs, and he’s moving now, fucking himself on Steve’s cock in short little thrusts, but that’s not what he’s pleading for.

“I know, Buck, I know. S’okay. I’ve got you, don’t I? I know you just can’t help yourself, baby. But it’s okay. I’ll take care of you, put that leash on you. Yeah? You like that? Fuck, look at you, of course you do.”

Bucky keens, cheeks red with borrowed blood. He ducks his face, hiding in Steve’s neck and clinging like he’s terrified of letting go, teeth all tucked away as he rubs his face into the hollow of Steve’s throat.

Steve holds him back, tight and secure like he’ll never let go, and fucks him too, rolling his hips and grinding deep, over and over until Bucky’s cock jerks between their bodies, coming dry and softening. Steve’s heart twists on himself; there’s something fragile and precious about this, Bucky spent and limp in his arms, all of him bared to Steve.

He buries his face in Bucky’s hair and rocks into him until his climax sweeps over him, every drop spilled inside Bucky.

Steve lies back down once he comes down, Bucky still clutched to him. His cock slips out, dragging along Bucky’s rim as it does, and Steve’s hiss is buried under Bucky’s shuddering moan. But he doesn’t move, lying plastered over Steve’s front. They’re a mess, come-stained and Steve sweaty to boot, but he just holds Bucky a little more comfortably, coaxing him to stretch out his legs and lie on Steve. He weighs barely anything, at least to Steve, and he wants to swallow him up, slit himself open and tuck Bucky safely inside a cage of bone and blood-wet viscera.

“Hey, pal,” Steve breathes after a while. He curls his hand around Bucky’s nape and squeezes gently. “You alright?”

Bucky stirs, and if Steve doesn’t know full well that Bucky can’t sleep, he’d think he was deep in slumber. But Bucky just turns his face so that his mouth isn’t smushed to Steve’s skin and says, “M’good.”

“Yeah?”

A little laugh this time. Bucky rubs his cheek on Steve’s skin again. That’s his most endearing habit, which is saying something because he’s got a lot.

“Yeah. You did me good. Always do, Stevie.”

Steve smiles, proud to have put that happy, sated note in Bucky’s voice and awed too, marveling helplessly at getting to have this.

“Gotta treat my best guy right.”

Bucky giggles, finally showing Steve his face. His eyes are all blue now, and Steve might love seeing him sport vampire red unabashedly, but Bucky’s shifting greys and blues are equally gorgeous.

“Hey there.”

“Hi,” Bucky says, grinning now. “You’re a filthy fucker, Steven Grant Rogers.”

Steve snorts and pecks Bucky on the lips. Bucky beams brightly at him and steals another kiss, lingering, their closed mouths barely parting before pressing together again.

When Bucky leans away, Steve reluctantly starts the process of extricating himself. Bucky rolls off him helpfully but makes a questioning noise.

“Gotta piss. Some of us have a functional bladder, and you’ve been lying on it for the past half an hour.”

Bucky just laughs, unrepentant. Steve feels his eyes on him as he makes his way to the bathroom and knows without looking that Bucky’s checking out his ass. He doesn’t stop smiling as he does his business, and when he returns, he finds Bucky sitting up on his side of the bed, leaning on the headboard and idly picking at the dried come on his belly.

“Here, let me,” Steve says, crawling over with the wet washcloth to wipe away the mess. Bucky hums softly through Steve’s ministrations and, once he’s finished, tugs him into a slow, toe-curling kiss.

“Go back to sleep,” he tells Steve, pushing him flat on the bed and tugging the covers over him. “It’s three in the morning.”

“Gee, I wonder why I’m awake.”

Despite the griping, Steve’s smiling and all but thrumming with bone-deep satisfaction, and Bucky’s pleased expression tells him he knows exactly how Steve’s feeling.

“What’re you gonna do?”

“I’m done with horizontality for the night. I’ll read or dick around online or something. You, sleep.”

“You mean you’ll pretend you’re on the phone while you’re actually watching me sleep.”

“You can prove nothing.”

“Sure, Edward.”

“For fuck’s sake, why the hell did you watch Twilight again?”

“It was on the list. Nat’s fault.”

“I’d expect that from Tony. Natasha, _why_?” Bucky cries in a tone of such abject betrayal that Steve extracts an arm from the covers to pat him on the knee, complete with a crooned ‘there, there.’

“Fuck you,” Bucky says petulantly but he also leans into give Steve a good night kiss and smiles when he pulls back.

“G’night, Buck.”

“Good night. Sweet dreams.”

Steve curls up into a ball, turned towards Bucky. A hand strokes idly through his hair, and he closes his eyes. He expects to fall asleep just like that; he’s pleasantly tired and comfortably tucked in. Every inch of him is yearning for sleep, not with the desperation of the exhausted and the sleep-deprived, but with a simpler, sweeter need.

But he doesn’t. He just lies there, too cozy to get up, too wide awake to drift off.

When Bucky speaks, his voice is pitched low, like he thinks Steve is asleep and is being careful not to wake him.

“Do you ever wonder, why I watch you the way you do?”

Steve does consider playing pretend, if only for a moment. He’s not sure Bucky meant for him to hear. But lying doesn’t sit right with him either, not about this, not to Bucky.

He doesn’t open his eyes when he says, “Tell me.”

Bucky freezes, fingers stilling in Steve’s hair. They resume their lazy sifting before Steve can rear up with a reassurance, and then he hears Bucky take a deep breath, the kind he doesn’t need but has become so ingrained a habit that he does it each time before he’s about to say anything serious.

“I – I’m used to people changing, you know? Humans grow and age and die, and I’m – I don’t. I’m left behind, all the time. And I thought I was used to that. I am. I _was_.” Steve starts to rise, open his eyes, but Bucky’s fingers tighten in his hair, and his voice is almost panicked when he says, “No, don’t. I don’t think I can do this when you’re looking at me.”

“Alright,” Steve murmurs, but he does reach up to curl his hand around Bucky’s knee. “You don’t have to, you know?”

“Yeah. I know, sweetheart. I want to. It’s just – I love you, you know? And it’s always been the same, when I loved humans before. I remember, god, I remember running from you, back when you were a five-foot-nothing spiteful punk. We were roommates for what, a year, then? I told myself I was running because I didn’t want to get into humans and their wars again, but it was you.”

These are things Steve knows, to an extent. The handsome, soft-spoken boy he shared a shoebox apartment with for a several, pleasant months in ’41 and a bit of ’42. He was gone one day, shortly after America entered the war and long before Erskine’s serum burned through Steve. Steve always wondered why he vanished like that, right until he wandered the streets of Brooklyn one night in 2012 and ran into a familiar, impossible face.

But some of this is new.

“Just as well that you ran,” he says when the silence stretches long enough that he thinks Bucky’s waiting for an answer; or judgement, maybe. He does that, often, like Steve’s in any place to judge him when seventy years of displacement nearly drove him insane in the beginning. Bucky’s three hundred years old. “The way I was then, I wouldn’t have seen thirty. And what happened after – well, I did die, didn’t I?”

Bucky makes a strangled noise and snatches his hand out of Steve’s hair, but he doesn’t speak. So Steve does.

“I had no idea, just so you know. You were – you’re still – the prettiest man I ever saw, and you barely looked at me. That was expected, mind you, but – this is a surprise, that’s all.”

“I looked,” Bucky says quietly. “I was always looking. You just didn’t see.”

There’s something in Bucky’s voice that urges Steve to ignore his warning and open his eyes. He finds Bucky looking at him with an expression that’s equal parts fear and wonder.

Steve doesn’t think, just reaches over and yanks him down. He grunts when Bucky lands hard on his chest but wastes no time wrestling the covers from between their bodies until it’s skin on skin, Bucky wrapped up in his arms.

“I’m not going anywhere, Buck. I ain’t like you, but I’m damn hard to kill and well, it’s been a decade, and I don’t seem to age. Think we’ll be fine, the two of us.”

“The world will age. People around us will. What makes you think I’ll be enough for you?”

“Could ask you the same, Buck. And I don’t know. I really don’t. But it’s easier to figure out when it’s us together, isn’t it? It’s not fun being alone against the world. We know that, both of us.”

Bucky’s quite for a while. And then, the tension drains out of him, almost literally, his body relaxing into Steve’s muscle by muscle.

“Alright, alright. Quit actin’ so wise, it’s creepy.”

“I’ll show you creepy,” Steve says, empty air. All he does is press a kiss to Bucky’s hair, nuzzling into the soft nest of it. Bucky makes a noise that’s as close to a purr as his vocal cords can manage and scoots down until he’s lying with his head on Steve’s chest, ear pressed to his heart.

“Sorry,” Bucky says, after long enough that Steve snaps out of a light doze with a sharp breath.

“Huh? What, why?”

Bucky shrugs, then nestles closer to Steve.

“I woke you up for a fuck – and blood – and then I didn’t even let you sleep with the afterglow.”

Steve’s speechless for a whole half-minute.

“Bucky, fuck, no. One thing, I wasn’t sleeping anyway. And another – I like you talking to me. If something’s eatin’ at you, especially about me, I’d rather know.”

“It ain’t that big a deal, Steve. I’m not – worried. Just, I think about it, sometimes, that’s all. And it’s not the only reason I watch you. You’re – you’re you. I like lookin’ at you.”

There’s such a delicate mix of truth and white lies in those words that Steve’s stumped, for a moment, on how to untangle it. He takes a deep breath and quietly lets it go.

“Okay, Buck. I love you,” he says, stroking Bucky’s hair and ghosting his fingers tenderly over the curve of his cheekbone. Bucky leans into the touch without quite moving from where he’s listening to the steady beat of Steve’s heart.

“Love you too, Stevie.”

Steve keeps stroking until his fingers grow heavy and eyes droop with sleep.

**Author's Note:**

> Drop me a comment if you can!


End file.
